Now that you have your video together, it's time to add the
audio. Plug in your iMic and microphone, then open the Sound panel in your
System Preferences, click on the Input tab, and choose "iMic USB audio
system." I've made a little QuickTime movie to
show you this process.

You could use iMovie instead to record your voiceover, but I prefer
QuickVoice. Before you record, you have to tell it what type of audio
input you want to use. In Quickvoice, open "Sound Preferences" under the
Edit menu, and make the following selections:

Compression -- choose "Qualcomm PureVoice" for your
compressor. This codec is optimized for voiceover, and it produces
very high quality and small files.

Sample -- choose a rate of 22.500 kHz at 16 bits and
using the mono channel.

Source -- make sure you have the iMic USB audio
controller selected.

Now open your QuickTime video sequence and place it along side the
QuickVoice controller. Click the record button on QuickVoice (to begin
recording), then click the play button on the movie, and start talking
while the movie is playing. That way your voiceover will correspond to
your pictures.

Remember, you can do as many takes as you want. Speak clearly and with
zest. Keep it simple so you're not trying to cram 300 words in a 100 word
space. Talk about the kind of things you'd like to hear if you were the
viewer.

After making your recording, open the "Message Palette" in QuickVoice
(Tools -> Message Palette). Your audio clip will be there in the
"Draggable Item" box. Hold down the Option key and drag it to the Desktop
or your work folder.

Open the file in QuickTime (just double-click) and trim it to the same
length as the video in your audio postcard. Choose "Select All," then
"Copy," to add the audio clip to your clipboard. Now click on the video
file and make sure the you're at the beginning of the movie. Use the "Add
Scaled" command (or Add if your audio clip is shorter than the
video). QuickTime will add the soundtrack to your pictures. If you were to
use Paste instead of Add, QuickTime would replace the video with the
audio, instead of adding to it.

Jackpot! You now have a cool audio postcard. Choose "Save As" and make
sure that the "Make movie self-contained" radio button is selected. Give
your card a descriptive name, then attach to an email.

The card will play on any Mac or PC that has QuickTime installed. It's
a hoot. Send one to a friend tonight.

Digicam Movies

You can make interesting little videos with your digital camera using
the QuickTime movie function. The problem is that you're stuck with that
lousy audio recorded with the camera's built-in microphone. Yuck!

But there's hope. Capture and stitch together your video clips as
normal. But add one more step: the voiceover. If you need a refresher on
how to capture and edit movies with your digicam, take a look at "Digital
Still Cameras for QuickTime Movies," Part One and Part Two for more
information.

Here's an example of a 12-second movie that has camera-recorded audio (as
ambient sound), plus an additional voiceover track. To hear what a
difference the voiceover makes, play the movie again with the audio turned
off.

You can add the voiceover to your mini-movie using the same procedure
as you did for the audio postcard. But I have an additional trick for you
here. Often the ambient sound your digicam records is too loud and
competes with the voiceover. In QuickTime Pro, you can easily adjust the
volume for each track until you get just the right blend.

Once you've added your voiceover audio, open "Get Movie Properties"
under "Movie." In the dropdown menu on the left, you'll see that you have
two soundtracks. The first soundtrack is what your camera recorded, and
the second is the voiceover you added.

Choose the first soundtrack and select Volume from the right dropdown
menu. Play the movie and adjust the sound for the first track until it is
at the level you want. Then repeat this process with the second sound
track. Soon you'll have the perfect blend of audio.

You can turn down the
camera's recorded sound as far as you want in Movie
Properties.

And you can make your
voiceover track as loud as you want. The trick is to find the perfect
balance of ambient and voiceover audio.

Again, use the Save As command and be sure to select the "Make movie
self-contained" radio button.

Screenshot Animations

Would you like to create killer online tutorials that are better than
all others? By combining what you've learned to this point about audio,
with Snapz Pro X video, you can show and tell your audience
how to get something done on their Macs.

If you haven't already, you might want to take a look at my sound preferences example that walks you
through the process of enabling the iMic USB audio system on your Mac.

Snapz Pro X allows you to record actions on your screen and save them
as QuickTime movies. Once you have your silent movie, you can replay it a
second time while recording the voiceover with QuickVoice, then combine
the tracks just as you have with the other projects.

By doing so, you have a powerful teaching tool at your disposal.

Final Tips

I know by now you have more than enough to keep you busy until the next
installment of the DigiCam Chronicles. Here are a few additional tips I
learned that might be useful for you too.

Related Articles

The DigiCam Chronicles: Assignment Macworld -- This is the first installment of a series dedicated to taking great digital images in a variety of settings. Today's stop: San Francisco for great architecture and interesting people shots from Macworld Expo. This photo essay includes 10 images with notes on how they were captured, plus a QuickTime movie.

Top Ten Digital Photography Tips -- You have a digital camera and have taken the typical shots of family and friends. Now what? Here are ten tips to make your next batch of digital images so impressive that people will ask: "Hey, what type of camera do you have?" Guess what? It's not the camera.

First, there's no need to go out and spend a bundle on a high-priced
microphone. In fact, sometimes they don't work as well as the inexpensive
computer mics you can get at any Radio Shack. If you want to learn a bit
more about the different types of microphones, take a look at this How Stuff Works
article. I used an inexpensive mic for all of the examples in this
article.

Another tip is that you can add as many soundtracks as you want to
your QuickTime videos and control their respective volumes via Movie
Properties. It's really worth the time to learn about QuickTime
functionality such as Enable Tracks, Delete Tracks, etc. For simple
projects, you can work faster directly in QuickTime itself, rather than
other bigger applications such as iMovie. To learn more about mastering
QuickTime, check out Apple's QuickTime online
tutorials.

Finally, if you feel inspired to try something right now, then do
it. Don't wait until you have all the proper tools in place to begin. You
can upgrade to QuickTime Pro instantly; everything else you can fake. This
article, and others like it, are to help you continually improve your art,
not present a barrier to it.